Most Helpful Customer Reviews

Have Fringe seasons 1-3 on DVD and currently dvr season 4 episodes. This is intelligent television. Plots are unique, FBI cases are super sci-fi in nature, characters are well developed and the dialogue is top notch! John Noble is brilliant as Walter in each universe, as is the rest of the cast. I cannot wait until Season 4 is released on dvd.

For its first three seasons, "Fringe" gave sci-fi junkies the type of show that had gone longing since "The X-Files" left the airwaves. It is cerebral, it is emotional, it is at times funny, and (most of all) it is well thought-out. Essentially, it is all the things that 99% of television programs these days are not. While this fourth season of the show is a bit uneven and doesn't quite live up to its previous cannon of work, it is still a quality show that provides some much-needed scripted drama to a TV market over-saturated by reality and competition shows.

(Minor spoilers ahead)

Like many TV show seasons, this fourth season of "Fringe" is broken down into three primary plot-arcs:

1. The search for Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), gone missing after the activation of the machine that brought the two universes together.

2. The Peter/Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) relationship, further complicated by the sheer number of universe-related possibilities that could be at play.

3. The return of David Robert Jones (Jared Harris) and the havoc he wreaks in trying to control the grand scheme of things, necessitating some brilliant thinking/actions from Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) to (hopefully) set things straight.

Where this season primarily succeeds is in its ability to (once again) tell stories from a completely different angle than one might think. For example, one episode jumps years into the future to see what may happen to our protagonists. Simply put, there is never a lack of creativity on the part of the show creators! Also, it never ceases to amaze how far the characters in "Fringe" come in any given season.Read more ›

I wish I had the heart to watch episodes from Season Four again and give a point-by-point analysis of why I am giving this season only three stars (which I can't since this set is not yet available), but I don't think I would have the heart to do it anyway.I have adored this show through the first three seasons, (see my review for Season Three) and as someone has already written, even in its diminished form it is still better than the vast majority of shows on TV today. Even so, this is merely damning the show with faint praise.The only way I can try to describe what happened in Season Four is to compare it to that infamous season of "Dallas." Patrick Duffy departed, apparently thinking that broader fame awaited him once he left the schlocky show in which he'd been mired for so long. His character was killed. Then reality hit--obviously he'd made a big mistake. No new acting opportunities appeared. So they wrote him back in by making the entire previous season a dream.If I were to guess at why Fringe's numbers turned south in Season Four, I would point first to the move to Friday night--Death Valley--but perhaps even more importantly, I would recall the writing staff's gutsy decision to make Peter literally cease to exist at the end of Season Three. What had happened by then? We fully understood that Walter had literally riven the universe to save the son (Peter) he'd already lost, then created a corps of supposed super-children, Olivia being one, whose task it would be to save their own universe once it began to collapse. Peter and Olivia had both been put through hell. Their relationship, one of the primary raison d'etres for the entire show, had been threatened by almost every conceivable force, and a few inconceivable ones. Somehow they had survived it all.Read more ›

So youre here reading some reviews on the latest season of Fringe. Maybe you watched it in the past or maybe a friend told you about it once. Either way you have made and excellent choice. Now I have watched everything Fringe since Fox brought it on in the fall of 2008. I rememeber a lot of people saying it was the next X-Files and such, but there is a lot more here than some of the other sci-fi you have watched. Unlike Star Trek, X-Files, or even Firefly this doesnt have a lot to do with space and more to do with theoretical science or as they refer to it as "Fringe" science. Better characters and brilliant writing and just a couple of things that make Fringe so good. Anyway you want to know if this is worth it so here I go.

Now season three introduce a structure of episodes that would alternated between our universe and the other universe. With that they were able to tell the story of both sides. This was an idea I was not too fond of to begin with but I figured out what they were trying to do. They wanted to show you how different things were, based on events and people's decisions in that timeline. This continues in season four and it picks up right from the season three finale. Now some people cannot grasp that storytelling style and I get that but people raved about LOST and it did a very similar thing!(and unlike LOST there is no map required here, contrary to some peoples beliefs)

Now the characters and writing have always been Fringe's strong point. Now my rule is if you don't like sci-fi stop watching it and giving it shoty reviews! Criticts keep trying to grasp things and either get frustrated and stop watching or are just not trying. The actors do a superb job, the best I think being John Noble.Read more ›